


Savage Stranger Sandor

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Comment Fic, Dark, F/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-04
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:03:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halloween dark-humor prompt (inspired by the series Dexter!):</p><p>What if Sandor's childhood trauma "broke" him a little more than we realize? Sneaky serialkiller!Sandor sets about doing away with everyone that's ever hurt/threatened his little bird.</p><p>Bonus points for particularly ghoulish demises and creative body disposal methods!</p><p>For Sylphic61 at the SansaXSandorFicMeme</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sylphic61](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=sylphic61).



There is peace in the seven kingdoms after the reign of fire, terror and blood. Bodies barely gone, still that crimson tide staining the ground beneath them and crows not yet begun to pick at the juiciest meats while the players on the board of the game of thrones continue to move their pieces. Sacrificing queens as pawns to move others forward on the field. Bishops crumbling. Rooks and knights, standing their ground the same as they always have—the power behind them changing from blue to red, and now as blue again as the veins beneath the Targaryn queen’s skin who sits the Iron Throne.

I am but a mongrel, a dog—the left hand of the throne. The terrible Hound. But I have never served any master but one, the Dark Stranger who lives inside my secret places. The shadow that is only quieted under the deluge of a sour Dornish red.

And by the maze of sanguine silk in Sansa Stark’s hair.

He likes her, the Dark Stranger. He lashes out at her, says things to her, makes dark confessions and she smiles like the sun and thanks him for his attention. Every proper courtesy observed even when he speaks of death, of men dying in agony, their intestines spread like summer sausage across the dirt. I enjoy her as well, the pretty little bird and the sweetness of her songs. The cream of her skin and the cherry blossom pink of her lips.

For the brush of those lips against ours, we’d tear down the Red Keep with our bare hands.

There are times when I hate the pretty chirping bird. I want her chirps and songs for me alone. Yet, she tilts her face up to the Dark Stranger, wets her lips in expectation the same as she does for me. She wants us both. She wants my arms, my touch, but she wants his too. His strength. His brutality that’s hidden inside me. She thinks he will keep her safe.

I have not kissed her yet, though she swears the night of the wildfire I took some kiss like a knight in a story. She doesn’t make this last comparison, but we hear it in her voice. She wants to believe it. He hungers for her, to push her down and ride her like a common whore and in the dark, when I fuck into my fist, I dream of the same.

I wonder if she’d still sit next to me and offer me bites of her lemoncakes with her ridiculous dainty fork if she knew how I thought of her. How he thinks of her. If she’d run screaming, crying—afraid. Or if she’d look at me with those guileless blue eyes clear as the stream Gregor drowned our sister in and pull up her skirts in blatant, yet still somehow innocent, invitation.

Today, I have no time to ponder this. She’s meeting with the septon to make her private offerings to the Seven.

  
That pious, self-righteous pile of offal who could have helped Sansa a hundred times, could have offered her sanctuary from the Lannisters and kept her safe. That pig who performed her wedding to the Imp and demanded she be stripped naked and insisted on inspecting the bride’s virginity for himself before her wedding.

For a large man, I move quietly through the passages and catacombs beneath the Great Sept. Much business has been conducted in the tombs of the Sept. Kings were born there, sacrificed there. As were traitors and usurpers.

  
As will be septons who betray their flock.

I’m going to kill them all, those who have betrayed my bird. The Dark Stranger is hungry and there is no better meal for him. In this, he and I are not so different. I hunger for their blood and screams as well.

  
Yet, I am distracted by the soft, mewling cries in a hidden passage. I would have ignored them if they hadn’t sounded familiar.

I find the lever and the wall slides away to reveal a secret dungeon and chained to the wall is the great whore queen, Cersei Lannister.

The Dark Stranger purred, pleased that she isn’t dead. Pleased that she’s here for our pleasure.

  
“Hound,” she sounds strangely relieved. “I knew you’d find me. Loyal dog until the end.” Her eyes weren’t cold emeralds, but warm with their need.

Her nakedness was offensive, her ribs defined through the thin veil of skin that sagged from her bones. Her teats were shriveled and those pretty thighs that men wrote sonnets about and sang horrors about the toothed beast that lay between, were brittle sticks. Her skin held the pallor of death, and sores around her wrists and ankles had been torn open by her shackles, tinged black where the flesh had gone necrotic. The stench of her infection, the filth that was on the inside now burned as brightly on the outside.

“My lady.”

“Free me and then kill the septon,” she demanded in a raspy voice.

I smiled. “That’s exactly what I intend to do.” She’d be free when the screaming stopped.

She’d been bound to a strange apparatus that could be pulled out of the wall and turned horizontal. I could tell from the marks on her body she’d been brutalized by the guards. But that wouldn’t break Cersei.

  
Quickly scanning the room, I saw everything I’d need was already present. As if the Seven had planned it this way. Or maybe the Dark Stranger.

I pulled the apparatus out and she strained in her chains for a moment, until she realized I made no move to release her bindings.

“You want me to pay you? Is that the only way you can get pussy, Hound? All right then. You know I’ve always been curious.”

The bitch was offering herself to me? I wouldn’t have fucked her with Robert’s cock when she was Queen of the Realm. I could help but laugh.

“Why are you laughing?”

I didn’t answer her. I drew my sword and dragged it gently from the tip of her throat down to her belly.

“You like games?” she asked, desperate. “We can play.”

“Yes, let’s.” I pushed the point into her soft flesh, just barely breaking the skin over her abdomen. “Truth or Consequence?”

“What?”

“How about just consequence?” I nodded, very pleased, the Dark Stranger purring a cheerful tune inside of me like a happy lion. An ironic comparison, I know. “You tried to kill Sansa Stark.”

“How does that matter?” she cried, still not understanding her situation.

“Time to pay the piper, as it were, dear Cersei. Your cunt won’t save you this time.” I didn’t feel the need for any long explanation. I didn’t care much if they knew all the details of why I was killing them. Eventually, they all feared the end of all things and the pain I’d give them on their journey there. Didn’t matter why.

I made a shallow cut from hip bone to hip bone. I would have liked to tear her wide, to root out that filthy nest inside of her that had spawned Joffrey, but he was dead now and so too would Cersei be as well.

She screamed this time and when her mouth was wide open, I shoved the smallest of the rats I’d caught inside her bellowing hole head first as far as I could go. It tore at her face as it struggled, it’s claws ripping into her cheeks and lips. I didn’t think it possible, but her screams intensified, or maybe that was just the honest terror behind them.

I dropped two more rats on her belly and I secured the washing bowl over them with a leather belt one of the guards had left. It was one of the more creative methods I’d learned in the SaltPans. Eventually, even if Cersei pushed the one of her mouth, the rats beneath the ceramic washing bowl would try to get out any way they good and flesh was softer than ceramic.

Although, before the septon died, I’d have to make sure he sang a prettier song than my little bird and told me everyone who knew that Cersei was beneath the Sept. They’d all have to die too and the rats would finish off any evidence she’d ever been there.

As Cersei screamed, I decided I deserved a treat for a job well done. The Dark Stranger agreed. Perhaps a taste of lemoncake off of the Lady Sansa’s plate? Or today, maybe even her lips if she offered them to me, tilted her face up with that feverish, innocent adoration in her eyes and her soft breasts brushing against my forearm.

  
She expected me to keep her safe and I would—such was the covenant between a sworn shield and his lady.


	2. 2

She has lemoncakes and all the lords and knights in their finery watch as the moist, tart treat passes her lips.  
They envy me as I accept a small portion on her little fork, the utensil worthless, but for the fact it has brushed her lips.

I watch as she takes another bite, pushes those golden tines into her sweet mouth and she smiles at me.

“I have a bit of a conundrum, shield.” She refuses to address me as Hound and I refuse to be called “my lord”. So, in the company of others, I am simply shield. I long for those long, quiet moments alone where she will speak my name, and somehow it is its own song.

“Yes, my lady?”

“The septon says I must take a husband. That a woman as young as myself to remain a widow is an offense to the Seven.”

There were many things I could say. Her refusal to join herself with an unworthy man is an offense to the Seven but her suffering was not? And yet, perhaps it was. I am here, with my Dark Stranger to see it happens no more. I am silent.

“There are many who want me,” she said. It is not arrogant or impolite, she would never be impolite. It is simply a fact. If they don’t want her for her full breasts and rounded hips, they want her for Winterfell. Yes, there are many who want her. “I want none of them.”

“Then bugger the septon and his Seven,” I whisper. Her cheeks color, but she smiles.

She whispers back, “If only it were that easy. I fear they mean to force me.”

With that single utterance, she’d brought even the new queen into my sights. But all queens and kings sought to marry alliances between the great houses. Would the little bird be horrified by the power her words wield?

“Set a great deed as your bride price, my lady. One no man could win.”

She leaned away, taking the scent of lemoncakes with her. “He must prove himself in trial by combat. Against you.”

  
The Dark Stranger roared his pleasure, but the logical part of me knew a moment of fear. “There is no man who is invincible.” Gregor could have defeated me, but he was dead and his body burned to ash. He’d not rise again.

“Which is why you’ll kill them if they try to take me from you.” She looked up at me, her eyes still guileless, but they glittered with an obvious knowledge. “No man would stand for you to remain my shield. He’d never have any power over me with you in the way. Even if he defeated you in combat.”

From any other woman, this would be manipulation at its finest, but she only spoke what she believed to be true. Pretty little Sansa. Her words had almost released the last of the Dark Stranger’s chains, that causal admittance that she belonged to me.

“Taking you from me, little bird, implies that you are mine somehow. I’m only your dog.”

She tucked her hand into the crook of my arm, her small fingers dwarfed against my bicep. “You’ll inform the septon, won’t you, of my requirements in a husband?”

I didn’t want to tell him shit, I wanted to kill him. But it appeared I’d have to wait for that pleasure. I wasn’t prepared for the consequences of killing clergy and defying the new queen’s edict outright. He’d live another day.

  
Skipping down the list, Varys was next. Then Baelish. I had a lot to keep me busy even putting off the septon.

Varys, the spider. It seemed another creature death was on the horizon. I’d see just how much he enjoyed the spiders he’d modeled himself after.

“You’ll do it, won’t you?” she asked again when I did not answer, a tremor of fear in her voice.

“Yes, my lady. It will be done.” I helped her rise from the table and we left the common room with all eyes on our departure.

“I wish you’d accept the title the queen offered you,” she said quietly as we walked.

“Then I would not be your sworn shield. I’d be a landless lord with a lord’s duties.”

“In need of a highborn wife with lands and bannermen.”

Her quiet words splintered the hold I had on the Dark Stranger. I pushed her into a dark alcove and pressed her hard against the stone wall, my face inches from hers. “I’d be no noble husband, girl. No knight of song happy to protect his lady fair while she sings in her cage, dreaming of other men with pretty faces.”

“Then you are no hound. Dogs are happy with table scraps. Beg for them, even.” She lifted her chin in defiance.

  
We kissed her then, him to punish her that she dared speak of such things and me, to test her. She did not open her mouth beneath our ruined lips, did not press back against us. It was enough. I would protect her even from _him_.

“Yes, this face is what you’d see on top of you. This body fucking you. Not so pretty a dream now, is it?” I released her and the Dark Stranger howled with rage inside me. I needed a cask of Dornish red now to keep her safe.

  
Her lips were swollen from our brutality, her eyes wide and her pulse raced; fluttering like a tiny, frightened bird’s wings as it tried to flee.

But she made no move to escape us. Instead, she stood on tiptoe, popping up like a wilting flower moved into the sun and cupped my face, her fingers cool and still smelling of lemons.

“Even when you’re angry with me, it’s still better than anything else I’ve known. Every day a safe one, secure that no one can take me from you? That no one will hurt me? Yes, a very pretty dream, indeed.” She kissed the ruined cheek that once she couldn’t even bear to look at and drifted down the corridor to her chambers like a ghost.

I followed her to her rooms, my duty as her shield. She smiled at me again when she disappeared behind the door and I waited until the bolt slid home.

A shadow loomed, then vanished from the end of the corridor. Someone had been waiting for her. I’d merged into the darkness of the unlit passage and followed.


	3. 3

My path took me deeper into the bowels of the keep, but I no longer had to listen for my quarry. I knew where my steps would lead—to the secret passage that led to the north wing of the keep. That was the only other place it could lead.

Where the Frey’s had been housed while at Court. They were here to present their case before the queen. The Frey heir had originally petitioned the queen for Sansa’s hand and Winterfell. She’d stood before all of the Court, the epitome of winter’s lady and promised him if he married her, he’d not live a fortnight. Of course she’d done it in a proper tone, with correct grammar and perfect diction.

Edmure Tully, the newly restored Lord of Riverrun had seconded his niece’s promise simply by moving from his place to stand behind her.

That was when the queen took me aside and offered me a title. Her twilight dragon eyes saw both too much and too little at once.

They were watching her now.

Ah, our list grows and swells with every second that passes. Perhaps it’s ambitious of me to believe I can eliminate anyone who targets Sansa Stark. But the Dark Stranger believes I can and it will be such a thrill to try. No matter if I succeed or fail, she will be the safer for it.

My steps take me back up toward my quarters. I have plans to make and supplies to gather for Varys. Yet, once again, fate has decided to sidetrack me.

The sawdust I left on the hinges to my door has been disturbed. Someone has been in my room. From the look of the look of it, it seems they are still there.

I begin to open my door carefully and see the shadow of boots on the other side. They think to surprise me once the door is closed, thinking they have the advantage by getting between me and the door.

I push with all of my weight against the door and it splinters against something solid, but not as hard as stone. Blood spills out beneath the door and I enter the room, shoving it half-heartedly into the doorway behind me.

A man falls to the floor, his nose crushed and spread across his face like a rotten melon. A concave dip on his forehead. He’s dead. The shards of bone from his nose and skull having pierced his brain and killed him instantly.   
Sometimes I don’t know my own strength. I didn’t mean to kill him. Yet. I wanted to question him first. He’s wearing Frey colors.

It’s pleasing to know that my paranoia for Sansa’s safety is not unwarranted. They’d only seek to kill me if they were planning on harming her.

I drag him with one hand to the water closet. It’s convenient that all of the water closets in the keep empty into the pig sties. Pigs will eat anything. Even human flesh and bone. Although I am tempted to toss this one back to them, his head on a pike to warn them and all at Court what happens to those who would stand against me.   
But it suits my purposes for now.

I hack him into pieces small enough to fit down the chute. For a smaller, weaker man, this would be heavy, thirsty work. But it takes me only minutes with a several well-placed strikes. The only thing useful I ever learned from Gregor.

I clean the blood just as efficiently with whiskey and lemons.

My quarters smell like dreams of her.


	4. 4

She opens the door with little care the next night when I relieve the young knight standing guard.

“Stupid girl, have I taught you no better than to open your door for strangers in the night?”

“You are no stranger. You are Sandor Clegane, my sworn shield.”

If only she knew the depths of my strangeness, she would not open the door. Even the Dark Stranger rebelled at the thought, he liked the way she spoke our name and was almost desperate to hear it again.

“And you still smell of lemons.”

“What is it you require, my lady?” I did not want to speak to her of lemons, or acknowledge she noticed my scent.  
That was dangerous territory for us both.

She looked up at me, long lashes brushing against the alabaster perfection of her cheek before fixing those eyes upon me. I’ve heard idiot poets speak of drowning in a woman’s eyes, but I never believed it possible. Hers were deep enough to fall into and never hit bottom. I had a care not to stumble, lest I never drag myself out of them.

  
Sansa invited me inside and before my mouth could protest, my feet had carried me forward and closed the door behind me.

Her gaze didn’t remain on my face and I couldn’t blame her. She always made it a point to look at me when we spoke, to meet my eyes. But I was surprised when a flush rose to her cheeks and I noticed where she was looking. She’d moved her eyes from my face, not to avoid the horror of my visage, but to evaluate the rest of my body.

  
That stare burned like fire over my shoulders, my chest, my stomach and down further still to my cock, where her cheeks pinkened further and then to my thighs, back up to my hands and finally, she drew her eyes up again to my face.

“You should not stare at men in such a way, little bird,” I rasped—my throat tight with need for her.

“But you’re so strong. Should I not admire strength?”

“Not unless you’re looking for a good fucking.” My blunt manner of speech had always made an impression before, she’d heeded my words. But not this time.

She put her hand over mine, it seemed so tiny. So fragile. Yet, she was tall for a woman. Though not so large as the Maid of Tarth.

“You could crush me if you wished,” she said absently. “Snuff out my life like the last candle flame of the evening.”

“Who do you want me to kill?” That was the only conclusion to this discussion.

“Would you do that for me if I asked? Just kill someone? Take their life on my whim?”

She leaned closer to me and the scent of something different washed over me. Roses. She’d washed her hair in rose water.

I grabbed her hair and jerked her head back, but there was no fear on her face. “What game are you playing at, girl? Say what you want and have done,” I growled into her ear, her hair a waterfall of fiery silk over my rough fingers.

  
Her hands had crept up my shoulders and she didn’t struggle in my grip. That terrified me more than any crying ever could have. It occurred to me again that she didn’t fear me. Or she wanted what she was after more.

“Forgive me. It’s difficult to speak bluntly. Will you not trust me?” she asked, her fingers creeping up perilously close to my ruined cheek.

I released her, but she did not back away from me.

“You offered to kill for me. Would you die for me?”

I snarled, but she didn’t flinch. “I said as much when I became your shield, didn’t I?”

“Then will you live for me?”

“I do.” Gods be damned, I hadn’t meant to say that. I should have told her to quit chirping stupid fucking questions and been on about my business. But she hadn’t chirped, her voice had been low and smooth like the summer honey. She’d asked with the mouth of a woman grown, not a child. A mouth I’d crushed my own ruined lips to the day before.

“Then why do I have to make you angry to get you to touch me?”

Every muscle in my body stiffened and I grit my teeth against the Dark Stranger who’d rattle like a hurricane in his cage, but it did not happen.

“You didn’t care for it much yesterday, little bird.”

“You startled me.”

“I’ll do a damn sight more than startle you, girl. So would any other man you invite into your quarters at night. I may be your shield, but I am still a man.”

“I know.” Her eyes fluttered closed, her eyelids like butterfly wings and she leaned against me, her lips to be kissed like a child’s.

I was suddenly sick with the trust she’d put in me. She didn’t really want me. She wanted the safety I offered and she was willing to trade whatever I wanted of her for it. I steeled my fingers to push her away, but the Dark Stranger erupted and took control.

He’d bowed to my wishes with her, to treat her gently, until I denied him what he wanted.

His kiss punished her again, but this time, she melted into us. Clung to us.

He surrendered control again, but I knew better than to break the kiss. To tell her to run and never look back. He’d never allow it. I was protecting her still.

She opened her mouth beneath the onslaught and her hot little tongue swiping at my lip almost caused me to spill in my breeches like a boy.

Sansa gasped when I pushed my hand beneath her gown and beneath her smallclothes, but she did not squirm away. She arched toward my fingers and I delved into her softness.

I’d thought my boldness would cause her to pull away, the very harsh reality of what joining with me would be like.

She was so tight—my cock would splinter her in two.

And then I felt it. Her maidenhead.

I broke away from her, jerked my fingers from between her thighs. She stumbled backwards, panting softly, and fell onto the bed looking startled and confused.

“Does it not please you?”

“Too much,” I confessed. We’d be her first, her last. There’d be no turning back then. Not for me, not for her.

She held my gaze as her nimble fingers began unlacing the bodice of her gown. It was like unwrapping a name day gift.

Until I heard the creak of the door as someone tried to open it.

“Bar the fucking door and don’t open it for anyone but me,” I rasped as quietly as I could.


	5. 5

I emerged from her room quietly and if I’d been thinking clearly with my head, rather than still distracted by my cock, I would have noticed the shadow waiting for me. But instead, I charged ahead into the darkness like an angry bull.

And I got a dagger to the thigh for my trouble. And another in my shoulder. But it wasn’t enough to stop me, or even slow me down. It was like no more than a pinch, Sansa’s little lemoncake fork would have done as much damage.

In one fluid motion, I pulled the dagger from my thigh and shoved it beneath the man’s ribs, just shy of his lung and pushed him to the ground.

“Who sent you?”

“He’ll kill me,” he gurgled, the blood bubbling up past his lips and dribbling down his chin.

“And what do you think I’m going to do?” I twisted the knife and rested all of my considerable weight on his torso, making it impossible for him to breathe. “Only I’ll do it more slowly.” I pulled the other dagger out of my shoulder, only a twinge of discomfort when I yanked it free. One of the benefits of my Dark Stranger.

“You feel the pressure on your chest? Hurts, doesn’t it? Imagine it tenfold in the Scavenger’s Daughter.” I leaned down in his face. “Metal bars on all of your limbs, crushing your bones in on themselves.” I used the force of my thighs to crush his arms into his ribs to drive my point home. “I could keep you alive for days. Weeks. Months. Until you tell me what I want to know.”

“He’ll pull her skin off. My daughter,” he managed.

Boltons. It had to be. They didn’t want Sansa to marry and bring her husband home to Winterfell where they’d be deposed and they were the ones who prided themselves on skinning their enemies.

I was starting to think the only way to keep Sansa truly safe would be to accept the fucking titles and restore Winterfell. With all the responsibility and bullshit that came with it.

 _Sandor Clegane_. Warden of the North. I laughed, a bitter sound.

But I was not without pity. He’d told me without telling. And should the Boltons use necromancy to determine… it didn’t matter. I’d bury his body in salt and block whatever craft they’d use.

Fuck you, Bolton. My mouth twisted into a grin.

I drove the dagger home into his lung and pushed it deeper, my fingers sliding through fascia and meat, up into his ribcage and finally into his heart. The man held my arm like a lover as I did, as if he were afraid I’d stop.

Covered in blood, I hauled him over my shoulder and slipped into a secret passage that led to the kitchens and from there, out to the warehouses where I’d lighten the store of salt.

I took a whole chest of salt, emptying out roughly half into other chests and I stuffed his body inside, burying it in the white grains.

Just as I was hauling it up over my shoulder, a voice startled me.

“Just where do you think you’re going with that?”

I turned to see a redheaded wench with her hands on her small hips and a scowl on her face to rival mine.

“Mind your business, wench.”

“This _is_ my business. Put it down,” she commanded.

The desire to laugh welled inside of me and when she pulled out a sharp little dagger, I couldn’t contain myself. “I’ve already been stabbed twice today, girl. That little butter knife isn’t going to help you. Off with you now.”

“So you have. You’re bleeding.” She made no move to do as I’d instructed.

Perhaps the little bird had softened me to redhaired wenches.

“Aye, girl. That I am.” I moved forward, but she continued to block my way and I pushed her aside, careful to remember my own strength. I didn’t want to hurt her, but if she didn’t get out of my way, I’d have to.

“I’m going to charge the salt to the Stark accounts,” she threatened.

“No. To Sandor Clegane,” I specified. If I were discovered, I didn’t want it to look like Sansa had any knowledge of my activities.

“So you’re the Hound.”

Really? Never, in all my years has a wench wanted to stand and visit with me anywhere but in a whorehouse and now, with a dead body in a trunk over my shoulder, she wanted to chat? I’d have been tempted if Sansa hadn’t already offered herself to me.

No, to be truthful, I _was_ tempted. Tempted to take this woman and exorcise my demons of lust and need, to spill them into her so I could find some gentleness for Sansa. But the Dark Stranger wanted nothing but the woman we’d sworn ourselves to.

“Do you see any other big, scarred bastards in this shithole?”

“None so big as you. And none so strong, either.”

This has to be another trick. One of the Freys, maybe? To use guile where once they’d tried brute strength.

“Are you big everywhere?”

My eyes narrowed. “Bigger than you can handle, little wench.”

“We’ll see about that,” she mumbled at my back as I exited.

I hauled the box with me all the way to Varys’ apartments in King’s Landing. I dumped it in the garbage pit by the kitchens.

He was expecting me and I was greeted at the door with the kiss of a crossbow. The arrow went all the way through my shoulder next to the wound where the Bolton’s man had stabbed me.

It felt like I’d been stabbed with an icicle.

He’d poisoned it.

Motherfucker. I should have expected something of the sort.

Although, I allowed myself to fall to the floor, there was no fear. I’d been taking antivenin and slipping myself small doses of the most commonly used poisons for years. I’d be fine. Maybe a fever and some hallucinations. I’d have to try to not kill anyone until they passed though. It would probably sloppy and I wasn’t ready to be discovered.

Varys bent down into my face as I was wont to do when killing before he spoke. “Sorry, Clegane. I’ve always liked you. It’s nothing personal.”

Of course it was. He’d hurt Sansa.

The box I’d had one of his “little birds” plant for me was sitting innocuously behind a rare orchid.

He turned, distracted as he put down the crossbow. I used that as my opportunity to pounce.

Varys tried to act as if my actions didn’t matter. “You know that cold chill you’re feeling? Soon, your blood will thicken in your veins and—”

I just smiled and he stopped talking as I dragged him over to the box. “It’s nice that you think this is nothing personal, Varys.”

I held him down easily with one hand, he was no match for my great strength. I opened the box to reveal to halves. One of the walls of the box was made of leaded glass, and the rest from Valryian steel. A quarter of the box had been partitioned off with mesh that could be released from the top.

I smiled again, my horrible ruined mouth twisting into a twitching grin—a rictus of death, as knowledge dawned on him black and awful.

Behind the mesh was a wall of crawling, skittering, spiders. Fat, black ones with little red violins on their backs.

It would take him a long time to die. Sweats, body aches, abdominal pain, swelling at the bite sites. Perhaps he’d live long enough for one of them to lay eggs in his ears, or other soft tissue?

“You are one of them, so you should be well enough at home in their company.”

I snapped the box over his head just as he started screaming and secured the locking mechanism.

“Please,” came the muffled cry.

I carried him, kicking and sobbing, as if he were no more than a temperamental child to his bed. There, I bound him in chains and pulled the tab to release the mesh.

The spiders swarmed from their restraint and I watched with glee as the wave of black crawling things obliterated the light inside the box. I imagined them crawling over his eyes and down into his throat, injecting him with venom as toxic as what he spread amongst court.

I didn’t worry about getting rid of his body. Or anyone finding him.

No one would miss Varys the Spider.

And my little bird could sleep more safely tonight.

I was headed to an inn where I could pass the next few hours and wait for the poison to work its way out of my system.

She’d be safe enough for the night when the second watch came to stand guard.


	6. Chapter 6

I’d never make it to the inn.

The burning started in my scars. They were aflame again just as they’d been that night all those years ago. I knew it wasn’t real, but it burned all the same. Wave after wave of heat washed over my skin and as it ebbed, it seemed to take my skin with it. My fascia and bones burned before my very eyes. 

The pain drove me to my knees and the fear of the fire kept me there, even with the voice of the Dark Stranger, cool like a spring brook in my ear. 

Visions of dark things danced in my head, but they were not in unfamiliar territory. These black visions had roosted there like birds of prey waiting for my deviance to hatch—their very own young. 

Sansa. Even her name was cool and sweet and part of me believed if I could just drink her down, taste her, that the fire would abate.   
It was with that thought that oblivion, like a black, eternal dragon, swallowed me whole.

###

 

Waves of fire had washed me away and it was in waves of the same I was resurrected and again released on the world.   
Bright light burned my eyes as I struggled to open them, the scent of lemons and roses in my nose, and cool fingers dragging wet cloth over my face, shoulders, chest and stomach. 

I’d never felt anything so decadent. The Dark Stranger was oddly silent. If anything, he was biding his time, plotting. As was I. I’d do anything to hold on to this feeling. This peace. 

The cloth moved lower down my stomach with every pass, yet more hesitantly. I kept my eyes closed, afraid if I opened them, it would be another fevered imagining, as it had to be. I knew my body lay somewhere in the forest, raging with fever, but my mind had brought me to Sansa Stark. 

She moved the cloth back up to my face where she treated both the unscarred and scarred flesh with equal amounts of cool water and tender ministrations. I reveled in it for a bit longer. While it was a pretty fantasy, I was a man who preferred the cold bite of truth to a lie. 

“Please don’t die, Sandor.” Her breath brushed my lips, her breasts crushed against my chest. She dragged the cloth lower again. 

I grabbed her wrist because if she touched us in such a way again, the Dark Stranger would roar to life and have her whether she wished it or no. “It’ll take a lot more than a bit of poison to kill me, girl.”

“Thank the Seven!” She sagged against me. 

“How did I get here?” I croaked, my throat sore. 

“By the grace of the Seven alone.” She wouldn’t look at me, only put the cloth into the water and began fussing with this and that, a nervous habit when she was anxious. 

“How long?”

“Three days. The Healer said it would’ve been kinder to let you die.”

“Aye, it might have been,” I agreed. If they had, she’d be safe from the Dark Stranger. Yet, she would not be safe from the septon, Baelish, the Boltons… 

A sharp, stinging slap to my cheek surprised me. “Don’t you say that,” she hissed. “Don’t you ever.”

And sick bastard that I am, the sting of her slap made my cock hard. Everything about her made my cock hard, but this especially.

The Dark Stranger was still silent. This was my chance to confess to her before we hurt her. 

“Sansa, I’m a monster. Rabid. One day, I’ll turn on you.”

This time I saw her arm draw back and I caught her delicate wrist easily. She struggled and I pulled her down to me, the thin sheet had fallen down past my hips and the silk of her dress rubbed against my cock. 

“Turn on me now,” she demanded, breathless. 

I steeled myself for the Dark Stranger’s brutal and immediate response, yet it was not forthcoming. I could release her now, let her go. I could break m vow to her, for her own good, walk away and never see her again. I could make her safe from him—from me. 

But the real monster wasn’t the Dark Stranger. It was me. Because I could no more walk away from her than stop breathing. It would be one and the same. 

“I kill people.”

“I know.” She leaned into my face, close enough to brush her lips against mine. Her breath was warm against my mouth.

I had to make her understand. I flipped her onto the bed, flat on her back and held her wrists above her head. “I like it.”   
I kept waiting for her to be afraid, but rather than shrinking from me, she seemed to arch up against me. 

“Don’t you remember what you told me about killers? How I’d best get used to them? That my brothers were killers, my father was a killer and someday my sons would be killers? Those were the words you spoke.”

“And they have exactly shite to do with the madness in your head now, girl.” Her curves were so sweet, I wanted to run my dirty, scarred hands all over that fine silk. 

“Girl? I’m a girl no longer. I’m a woman grown who could have been Queen in the North.”

“You deserve better than this.” I growled, still afraid the Dark Stranger would rise up and…

“I deserve the best, I agree. And if I must live in a world of killers, are you not the best?”

Her works sparked a black, joyous mania. 

“I see you, Sandor. And I see your darkness. I want you both. I need you both. I’ve received word that Baelish has come to pledge his fealty to the Queen.”


End file.
